​1775 - 43-year-old Samuel dies at Concord & Lexington. He is found by the wizard Shazam & given the chance to become his champion, but he rejects the wizard's power in the favor of the strength of his Nation. He becomes the elemental spirit of America, Minuteman.

​1940 - Uncle Sam manifests again during World War II, assembling the Freedom Fighters to fight overseas.

1945 - Uncle Sam stop appearing when World War II ends, marking the last time America has declared war, ending his appearances.

The realization that Uncle Sam is actually a DC Comics superhero always seems odd the first time you discover it. It shouldn't be that odd... he's a fictional character, and SOMEONE must own the rights to him. In his case, he was published by Quality Comics and then later acquired with the rest of their character line by DC. The Freedom Fighters were created as an alternate history team of heroes battling against a victorious Nazi regime, creating a home for many of the less popular Quality characters.

The idea that Sam is a spiritual entity representing the strength of American Patriotism was introduced to his story after his integration into the tapestry of the DC multiverse, as well as his earlier incarnations as Minuteman, Brother Johnathan, and the dual identities of Johnny Reb & Billy Yank. It gave him a sense of scope that was very clever.

In order to better integrate Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters into our unified timeline, we've put in a little work to expand Sam's story. Rather than being an entity crafted by the founding fathers using occult magic (which... what?), we've tied his magical origin to the wizard Shazam. The role as the Wizard's champion is already well established to be a very powerful one, so to have him chose to reject that role in favor of being the manifestation of the patriotic spirit of the nation actually has a certain symmetry that works immediately.

This was actually a fun history to make, because by designing the character so that he manifests whenever America is at war we got to do a little bit of history research and find the specific years when American was actually at war. In fact, this principal actually completely explains the fact that Sam hasn't appeared again since WW2, as American stopped declaring war at that point in favor of 'conflicts'. Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and so on aren't 'wars', strictly speaking. This idea works really well right now, although if America ever did actually declare war against someone again, the story sort of falls apart.